San Diego and Beverly Hills 2016

The monks are finished with California for now and ready to see Chicago. San Diego was a nice pace to get into before the big conference in L.A. and we felt warmed up for the days ahead. Our L.A. trip started with dinner at Maggiano's Little Italy, a nice restaurant for weddings, meetings and big or small dinners. The host, Linc Davis, was there for everything we needed and his staff was sharp. Thanks to Ravi and Sheela Visswanathan for driving the monks around and taking care of our every need.

Driving in California takes a long time! We found out it is normal to drive on the highway for 2 hours to get somewhere. That was a shock for the monks who are used to ten or twenty minute drives down the monastery hill.

The three day Sages and Scientist Symposium was jam packed with world renowned quantum physicists, brain scientists, meditators, yoga teachers, doctors of medicine and even critics were given the stage to explore the differences in belief. It was made apparent that no longer can critics have a ground to stand on, as meditation and healing studies are being objectively proven with data for all to see: the life that incorporates meditation and cosmic consciousness leads to a heightened wellness and better life experience.

Here is Paramacharya with our San Diego hosts Ravi and Sheela Visswanathan. We get to the dinner party early and help setup.

Our California family gets together for a group photo

This is the Muttulingam clan posing with Swami. Chandipati is the youngest in the middle, followed by his brother Balukumar on the right and sister Lalitha on the far left. These kids are amazingly energetic and certainly filled and thrilled. If you ask the youngest, Chandipati, for thumb wars, make sure you have plenty of time.

The next day we arrive at our hotel and conference hall location, the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills. This is a shot of their personal alley. You must drive up through this street to get inside.

The other side of the personal drive

The front entrance covered by something we saw a lot of: fancy cars

We pull up in our new black Lamborgini. Just kidding. These cars were everywhere and available to drive around in if you stay within a 5km range. We did not have time unfortunately.

The inside hall going into the conference center. Beautiful tile everywhere and fine woodwork inside other rooms.

The giant conference hall that fit around 500 people at the hight of the conference. The blue\/black stage is in the middle and the background is a large projector screen.

The conference opens with a 30 minute talk from Deepak Chopra via an upstairs \"hologram\" room where he is being projected for dramatic effect. You can see by the words on the screen that his main teaching stems from the sanskrit phrase \"Aham Brahmasmi\" or I am the Universe.

Paramcharya sits down with Deepak for a short interview. Hinduism Today does not ask the easy questions. Paramcharya wanted to know what Deepak was bringing to the oldest teachings in the world with this conference. Deepak said he is only bringing the \"luminaries\" teaching\

s forward to the masses. '

We got a moment to go outside with the Tanzi family and Ravi and Sheela. In a surprise moment actually, the Visswanathans were invited to the conference on the spot thanks to Rudi and Deepak.

Group photo with Asha, Rudi, Swami, Ravi and Sheela

Asha guided us all to see the Endeavour Space Shuttle at the California Science Museum. This is the control panel look-alike model for guiding the ship into space.

From the command station they are able to monitor all of the communications from inside the spaceship and observe data about the launch.

Swami and the Tanzis talking with a picture of the spaceship being delivered to the museum after its retirement. The delivery invoice is on the wall to the right and shows the cost of almost 2 billion dollars. There was a deal going on that day.

The group with the Endeavour itself. I think we heard it had 23 missions into space. Sometime to pick someone up or deliver supplies to space programs.

Rudi asked before we went in \"I wonder who makes this kind of thing, I wonder if we could see a guy like that.\" And sure enough Bob appeared. Bob helped build the spaceship after he graduated college in the 60\

s\/70\'s I think it was. He knew everything about it. Bob and Rudi had some really cool conversations about current Mars mission objectives and politics. Rudi helps keep future Mars astronaut\'s brains healthy by projecting what their environment will be like and how to prevent illness. Most of what he does is classified. '
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